


Locked Windows

by watanuki_sama



Series: Windows [1]
Category: Common Law
Genre: AU, Alcohol, Breaking and Entering, Drunkenness, M/M, Pre-Slash, Wes has cats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-16
Packaged: 2018-04-26 14:27:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5008291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watanuki_sama/pseuds/watanuki_sama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Travis crawled through Wes’s window drunk, and one time he did it sober.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Locked Windows

**Author's Note:**

> Also posted on FF.net under the penname 'EFAW' on 10.15.15.
> 
> Based on a post on tumblr about accidentally climbing through the wrong window while drunk. How could I resist?

_“The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passer-bys to come and love us.”_  
_—Robert Louis Stevenson_

\---

1.

\---

The window boxes throw him, because seriously, when did Paekman put those in? Hell, when did Paekman take up gardening in any form? But Travis doesn’t let it deter him, just jimmies open the window and slithers through, totally expecting to drop flat on his face because he is more than a little drunk right now and rather uncoordinated.

But lo, there is a desk to catch him! Travis stares at the unexpected piece of furniture for a long, long minute, alcohol-sodden brain cells trying to process what’s happening here. There shouldn’t be a desk under the window. And that lamp looks nothing like the one Travis remembers. And the couch isn’t that ratty thing Travis helped carry up for twenty bucks and pizza, and holy _shit_ Paekman redecorated his _entire_ apartment. Without telling him!

Travis feels mildly insulted.

“The bastard,” he grumbles, unsteadily climbing off the desk. It must be brand spanking new—there’s like, nothing on top of it. At least he doesn’t knock anything over. He staggers across the room, guided by the ambient light from the open window (he’s not going to close it, ha, yeah right, it would serve the bastard right if bugs climbed through and got all their little buggy germs on stuff.)

Still grumbling, he falls heavily onto the couch. Oh, this is a nice couch, he can tell right away. Soft and squishy with just enough fluff in the middle that he thinks he can sleep on it without getting a sore back. So, okay, Paekman still totally should have told him he was redecorating, but Travis might forgive him for this couch.

He drops off almost instantly, and his last thought is to wonder when Paekman got a food processor in his kitchen.

He has an incredibly strange dream where Batman and Robin are playing hide and seek with him, and Batman finally wins when he sits on Travis’s chest. The dream is complete with actual, lung-crushing pressure that has Travis jerking awake, only to find there _is_ , in fact, someone sitting on his chest.

Or some _thing_. A full grown cat, all black with a blobby white patch on his chest that might, under the right lighting and the influence of an illegal substance of some sort, look like a bat, stares haughtily down at him with all the disdain cats can muster for strangers. 

Travis blinks at the animal. “Well, hello there,” he mumbles wheezily, reaching up to scratch behind the cat’s ears while his other hand attempts to dislodge the feline. “Where did you come from?” Because okay, the desk and the lamp and the food processor, that’s something Paekman might change without hesitation, but getting a _cat_? No way. Paekman _definitely_ would have mentioned that.

A throat clears, off to the side. Travis turns his head.

He blinks.

“Paekman, when did you become white?”

The blonde-haired white man who is _definitely_ not his best friend crosses his arms. One of his hands is holding a heavy-looking wood baseball bat.

“I will give you three seconds,” he says flatly, “to tell me who you are and why you are on my couch, before I hit you with my baseball bat and call the cops.”

“You mean you haven’t already? That’s sweet.”

The guy growls and hefts the bat menacingly. Travis hastily sits up, receiving several claws digging into his chest as the cat protests this treatment. “Okay, okay, wait wait wait. I—shit, my head—I thought this was my friend’s apartment. Uh. Did he move? Who are you?”

“Who are _you?_ ”

“Travis Marks,” Travis replies instantly, because that is a prime-o example of a baseball bat and Travis is in enough pain already, thanks hangover, he doesn’t want to receive any more. “Seriously. I didn’t, like, steal anything. I thought my friend lived here.”

“Your friend Paekman.” Travis nods. Slowly, brow furrowing, the blonde says, “There’s…David Paek lives in 3-F.” Travis nods again, and receives a scathing glare in return. “This is 3-J. You’re at the wrong corner of the building.”

“Ah. Well, they all look the same in the dark.” He shrugs, squinting against the glare of morning. “I was a little drunk last night, see.”

“Yes.” The blonde coolly regards him, and Travis doesn’t think it’s a positive review. “I’m getting that impression.”

“Sorry ‘bout all this.” Travis grins charmingly. It never fails to work. Even Paekman, who has had many years to grow immune to the charm of his smile, can’t help but give in.

This guy doesn’t so much as flicker. “The door is there,” he says sharply, pointing with the bat. “Don’t let the cats out.”

And, well, what else is Travis supposed to do except leave?

\---

2.

\---

“Seriously, what the _hell?_ ”

Travis perches on the windowsill and grins at the man at the desk. “Hi, Wes Mitchell in 3-J. I didn’t kill any of your flowers this time. I think.”

The blonde’s eye twitches. “That’s great, gold star for you. Why the hell are you climbing through my window again?”

“Better visibility,” Travis says, swaying a little. Or maybe the window is swaying around him. He’s at that point in the drunkenness where things seem to move of their own volition. “Or, like, un-visibility. I dunno. There’s less people on this side to call the cops when they see me climbing through the window.”

“ _I’m_ going to call the cops on you for climbing through my window.”

“No, no, it’s okay. I’m the cops. A cop. Something.” He leans into the window, and is mildly amused by the way Wes leans back the same degree.

“I don’t believe it. If you were a cop, you’d know better than to break and enter like this.”

“Window was open, totally wasn’t breaking anything.” Ignoring Wes’s squawk of protest, Travis slides through the window and over the top of the Spartan desk. “Before you call anyone, I gotta use the bathroom.”

Wes’s face does something extremely complicated that Travis probably wouldn’t be able to translate sober, let alone drunk. Then he sighs and points. “First door on the left. Touch any of my stuff and I’ll kill you.”

“Copy that.” Travis tosses off a sloppy salute and staggers to the door in question.

He does some snooping while he’s in there, how could he _not_. But all he finds is a fuckton of hair products and like five things of floss. The cabinet under the sink looks like the man is preparing for a siege, with floss and toothbrushes and toothpaste and like a bajillion bottles of hand sanitizer. Travis shakes his head, because of _course_ he would end up crawling into the weirdo neat-freak’s apartment. Couldn’t be someone _cool_.

But he has cats. Travis is reminded of this when the cute black one twines around his legs upon exiting the bathroom. The other one, a pale Siamese with a dark brown mask, regards him loftily from atop a bookshelf.

Bending over is a little difficult, due to his current state of holy-shit-the-world-is-moving, but he manages. For the cat’s sake. “Hello, Batman.”

Wes, who has turned his desk chair to watch his progress, says, “That’s a girl.”

Travis ponders this as he carefully picks the cat up, and yes, this is a much better position. So much less spinning of the world when he’s upright. “…my previous statement stands.”

Wes sighs. “Her name is Bono.”

Travis stares. “You won’t name your cat Batman, but you’ll name her after the _male_ lead singer of U2?”

“Short for Pro Bono. It has nothing to do with music at all.”

Travis continues to stare. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but what’s your other cat’s name?”

“Tortfeasance.” Wes shifts under Travis’s gaping. “It’s a lawyer thing. Inside joke…”

“Dude, those are _terrible_ names for cats.”

“Hey, my girlfriend named them, not me.” Wes starts out irritated, but ends up dejected. “Well. Ex-girlfriend.”

Travis scratches Batman (that’s her new name now, Bono was only cool when he thought it was for U2) and nods sympathetically. “I feel for you, man.”

Wes’s eye twitches. “I don’t want you to feel _anything_ for me. Now unhand my cat and leave, please.” He rises to his feet, apparently prepared to escort Travis from the premises. “And I don’t want you to climb through my window again.”

Travis grudgingly allows Batman to slip free. Wes wraps an arm around his forearm and starts pulling him to the front door. “But Wes, man, if I never come back how am I supposed to keep the romance alive?”

“What romance? There is no romance.”

“ _Us_ , man, this budding _thing_ between us.” Travis flaps a hand between them. “Come on, I already won over your cats. It’s just a matter of time. Next time I’ll sing a serenade out your window.”

“You do that and I’ll smother you.” Wes drags him down the hall, pounding on the door to 3-F. After a long minute of angry knocking, it opens to Paekman’s slightly puzzled face, which clears as soon as he sees Travis in Wes’s grip.

“This delusional vagabond crawled through my window,” Wes snaps, thrusting Travis towards Paekman. “ _Again_.”

“Travis, _seriously_? Come on, dude.”

Travis stumbles into his friend’s embrace, which turns out to be not-so-loving as Paekman rather forcefully grips his arm. “Better invisibility,” he mumbles, listing, and that is not quite the right word, he thinks, but it’s close enough.

Wes points at Paekman, like Paekman is Travis’s keeper. “He does it again, I _am_ calling the cops.”

Paekman gives him a squeeze. “He won’t do it again,” he promises.

Wes nods once and stalks off, and Paekman shuts the door.

The lecture that follows is mostly tuned out, and Travis spends most of the rest of the night plotting ways to steal Batman away for himself.

\---

3.

\---

It’s still daylight when Travis crawls through the window and across the desk. Well. Daylight-ish. Things are turning the dusky rose of sunset, but Travis can’t enjoy it. He stumbles to the couch and plops face-first, and he doesn’t move. After a while, four little feet jump onto his shoulders, wander down his spine, and settle right on one of his kidneys.

After half an hour or an hour or more, Travis really can’t tell, there’s a key in the door and the rustle of grocery bags. Feet walk in. Then feet stop.

After a minute, Wes says, “You’re getting started early today.”

Travis mumbles into the couch cushion.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand drunken couch mumblings.”

He turns his head just enough to free his mouth. “Can we not, today? My mom—” His voice cracks on the words, and he fights not to cry. Again. “My mom died.”

There’s a long pause. Travis shoves his face back into the cushion and wonders which will kill him first—the difficulty breathing through the couch cushion, or the seemingly-infinite weight on his kidney. Anything is better than this crushing, agonizing hole ripped in his chest.

Finally, there’s another rustle of plastic, and footsteps heading into the kitchen. Travis doesn’t hear the beeping of 911 being called, so he thinks that’s a good sign.

The other cat settles on his shoulders after he’s laid still long enough, further adding to the downward force into the cushion, and Travis thinks that suffocation is looking more and more likely. Since suffocation is a much more preferable way to go than wasting away from grief, Travis is mildly disappointed when the footsteps wander over to the couch and shoo the cats off his back.

“Come on, Travis, sit up,” Wes orders, voice maybe a little gentler than usual but no real sympathy in his voice at all because he is a rude bastard with nice cats and an awesome couch. Hands poke and prod and pull him up, and Travis groans his way to a sitting position. “Drink this.”

“You have no soul,” Travis grouses, slumping back against the couch, cradling the glass of water in his hands. “It must be a lawyer thing. They take it out. I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Absolutely,” Wes says dryly, sarcasm dripping off every word, and to his surprise, Travis feels the corner of his mouth twitch upward, just a little bit. “They have a machine under the courthouse, take us there after we pass the bar. Just vacuum sucks it right out.” He makes a slurping sort of noise that has Travis snorting inelegantly. “Now drink the water.”

“I knew it,” he mumbles, and he closes his eyes and drinks the water.

He opens them a minute later when something rather delectable is thrust under his nose. Before him is a bowl of pasta, mixed with tomatoes and sautéed greens that Travis eyes dubiously. “Is it poisoned?”

“Of course not.” A fork is thrust into his hand. “Eat.”

Travis doesn’t _think_ Wes would poison him, if only because he wouldn’t want to deal with the hassle of disposing of the body. Hesitantly, he takes a bite.

Then he takes another. And another, because hot _damn_ the boy can cook.

He eats. Then he falls back on the couch, throwing an arm over his eyes. Within a minute, his stomach has become the napping place for one of the two cats. The other one drapes over his legs. Travis doesn’t bother to check and see which is which.

Wes lets him be. He leaves for a few minutes after he’s cleaned up the dinner dishes, but when he comes back, he doesn’t make any fuss about Travis getting out of there. He just settles at his desk and starts working.

After a while, Paekman comes by and collects him. It’s a small sort of kindness, Travis realizes, that Wes let him stay until Paekman came home.

He remembers to mumble thanks on his way out the door. Wes watches him go with a soft look on his face that Travis really can’t quantify.

\---

4.

\---

The apartment is quiet when he slips in. The lights are on, but the place is still, which is unusual because if Wes is home he’s usually making _some_ noise. Travis sits on the edge of the desk and swings his feet, letting his wobbly equilibrium get used to being on solid ground and not clinging to a wall. He wonders if Wes is out, and left the lights on for him.

Then he sees feet, hanging over the edge of the couch. More than a little curious, Travis hops to the ground and unsteadily makes his way around the end of the couch.

Then he stops, and he stares.

Wes is sleeping, stretched along the length of the couch, his cats resting on his stomach and thighs. His face is smooth and there are no annoyed angry lines that Travis is familiar with, and he looks so _peaceful_. It’s something else.

Travis crouches down, peering at the blonde. He’s never really had a chance to look at the guy up close, and most of his memories are distorted and fuzzy due to whatever brand of booze he’s swallowed that night. (Tonight it’s vodka. He clearly remembers vodka.)

Wes is not a bad-looking guy. He’s got nice cheekbones. Travis has never really paid attention to cheekbones before, but Wes’s are nice. And his lips are a little thin but they’re nice and pink and his skin is clear and he’s got freckles on his neck, Travis can see them in the little divot where his shirt sort of gapes. _Freckles_. Travis doesn’t quite know how to handle this.

He leans close. He’s not sure what he’s thinking of doing, just that Wes is here and Travis is here and that seems to be enough.

Travis gets close enough that their noses are almost touching. Then Wes opens his eyes, and holy fuck, he’s got the bluest blue eyes to ever blue. Like _seriously_ blue, ice and sky and storm all rolled into one. Travis has blue eyes but these are _blue_. Travis wonders if this is the vodka speaking, because he normally doesn’t expound poetic about _anyone’s_ eyes.

Eyes that go from sleepy and confused to enraged in a second.

And then Travis is on the receiving end of a truly spectacular right hook, which is saying something considering Wes’s arm was previously tucked up against the couch. Travis blinks up at the ceiling, and he sort of knows there aren’t stars up there but boy are they kind of pretty.

“That was a fabulous punch,” he slurs. “I think I’m in love.”

Wes looms over him, his glare sharp enough to cut diamond. “I will strangle you and chop you into pieces and flush you down the _toilet_ ,” he snarls. “What kind of person sneaks in like a stalker while someone is _sleeping_ and—and—I don’t even know what you were doing!”

“I think I was going to kiss you,” Travis tells the ceiling, gingerly probing his eye. It’s already starting to swell. What a _fantastic_ punch.

Wes turns a mottled red. “You—you were—” Words apparently fail him, and he storms out of the apartment. Travis hears the door rattle when it slams.

He closes his eyes, just for a second, and when he opens them again Wes is scowling in the corner and Paekman is staring in disappointment down at him. Travis gives him a goofy grin.

“Hey, man.”

Then he rolls over and throws up on Paekman’s shoes.

Thankfully, the vodka keeps him from remembering any of this in the morning.

(Unfortunately, it doesn’t spare him any of Paekman’s retelling after breakfast.)

\---

5.

\---

“Are you an alcoholic?” Wes asks from somewhere to his left.

Travis groans from the floor. “You moved your desk. Why? It was such a perfect desk.” It kept him from falling on his face when he went through the window, and now it is gone and Travis has fallen flat on his face. “What kind of bastard moves his desk?”

“I’m sorry my rearrangement of _my_ apartment inconvenienced you,” Wes says dryly. He huffs, and Travis can kind of picture him crossing his arms, all snippy and annoyed. “Are you homeless?”

“What?” That makes Travis lift his head. “Dude, no. I have a home.”

“Then _why_ ,” Wes scowls, and yup, there are the crossed arms, “do you persist in climbing through my window once a week?”

Travis grins soppily up at him. “Cuz I like you.”

Wes’s face twists. “You’re drunk.”

“Yes. Yes I am.” Slowly, carefully, Travis levers himself upright. “I also like your couch. And your cats. And, you know, your couch holds me when I sleep and your cats adore me, so I’ve got two out of three here. I’m winning.”

“My cats eat dry kibble out of a bag, they have no taste.”

“Lies.” Travis looks around the room, listing uncertainly even though he’s only sitting, which means he’s hella drunker than he thought he was. Shit, he’s amazed Wes can understand the near-incomprehensible slurring coming out of his mouth. “Where are they? Wanna hug them. Batman, come’ere, guuurl…” He wiggles his fingers at empty space, squinting at the corners of the room.

Wes’s voice suddenly changes. “Travis? What’s wrong?”

“S’nothing.” He wiggles his fingers some more, crooning, but Batman does not come. “M’fine.”

“Your hands are shaking.”

Travis looks at his hands, but they do not look particularly shaky to him, most likely because of the booze inside of him. At this point, it’s possible he’s more alcohol than man, which was kind of totally the point.

“M’fine,” he mumbles again, pulling his hand back because apparently Batman isn’t going to come over and love him. “S’nothing, nothing, just a bad day, is all. Very bad day. Gah! Why’d you have to remind me?” He presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, and the bright stars that burst behind his eyelids kind of make him nauseous, but it’s better than…than what else he could have seen.

“Travis?” Wes’s voice is kind of high and maybe a little panicky, and it grates on Travis’s ears. He groans, thumping back onto the floor, and he doesn’t remove his hands.

“Kids,” he moans, and now he can feel his hands trembling against his face. “Why’d it havta be _kids_ , man?”

Kids are his weakness, and he just…he can’t. He just _can’t_ , okay, that’s all there is to it.

Wes’s feet retreat, and Travis feels a pang. Stupid, stupid, to even come here in the first place because what he and Wes have is barely anything at all. Travis crawls through Wes’s windows. Wes throws him out. Coming here after a day like today is absurd. What did he expect? _Comfort?_ Why would Wes even bother?

The feet return. Travis doesn’t bother opening his eyes.

Until Wes says, “Travis, if you come to the couch I’ll give you a cat to cuddle.”

Curiously optimistic, Travis lifts one hand and peers at Wes. The blonde is crouched just out of reach, a sleepy Batman curled in his hands. He nods encouragingly when he sees Travis looking. “That’s right. Make it to the couch and you can have her.”

That’s enough incentive to have Travis slowly clamber to wobbly feet and lurch to the couch. It takes half of forever to get there, and twice he has to stop and regain his equilibrium before the keels over and vomits, but he manages it. He collapses in the cushiony goodness of Wes’s couch and decides that if he’s going to die of alcohol poisoning and grief, right here is a pretty damn good place to do it.

A warm, furry bundle is dropped into his lap. Travis gathers Batman up without opening his eyes and cuddles the little feline to his chest, like maybe if he just holds her tight all the horrors of the day will wash away.

Wes’s footsteps retreat once more, then return in a hurry. “Travis,” the other man says, nudging him gently, “I need you to drink this. Please?”

The please, more than anything, is enough to have Travis open his eyes. Wes holds out the glass of water, looking unaccountably concerned.

“Careful,” Travis mumbles, taking the glass. It’s only half-full, so the water doesn’t spill in his trembling hands. “People might think you care.”

Wes’s face twists, and he takes the glass from Travis and sets it on the coffee table. “You’re still shaking,” he murmurs, more to himself then to Travis, because Travis is so beyond caring right now. He wants to go back to that happy place where he floated on a sea of alcohol and nothing hurt at all.

This time, when Wes goes away and comes back, he returns with a fluffy looking blanket that he drapes over Travis’s shoulders. Travis huddles beneath it, feeling small and wrung out and vulnerable, and he kind of hates himself for coming here in the first place.

But he kind of loves Wes for doing this, a little bit.

The other male hovers, anxious and upset. “What else can I do, Travis? What do you need?”

“Dunno.” Travis sighs, eyes slipping shut, and he curls over Batman in a near fetal huddle. “Bad day, Wes. Ver’ bad day.”

There’s a minute of silence, and Travis can feel Wes’s indecision, but he doesn’t look up. Can’t bring himself to muster the energy.

Finally, Wes sits down beside him, and Travis lets out a breath, leaning sideways. Wes catches him, one arm wrapping around Travis’s shoulders, and Travis knows this has got to be awkward as hell for Wes, but god, he feels safe.

“It’ll be okay, Travis,” Wes murmurs into his hair, and for the first time all day, Travis almost believes those words.

\---

+1.

\---

It’s a lot harder to climb up the wall with only one hand, but then again, for once he’s not drunk, so that makes it easier. He scrambles up the wall and thanks god this part of the building is so isolated because he’s doing this in broad daylight and the _last_ thing he needs is someone calling the cops when he’s trying to be romantic.

He perches on Wes’s window boxes and does his very best not to crush any of the tiny flowers because it’ll also kind of kill the mood to have Wes bitching at him about his flowers when Travis is trying to do something like this.

And then he tries something new.

He knocks.

It’s kind of funny, really, to see Wes going for the door, but then, that _is_ the logical place most people would go when they hear a knock. Travis knocks again, a little louder this time, and when Wes turns and spots him, he gives a little wave through the glass.

Wes looks mildly amused when he opens the sash. “What, did you forget how to break in?”

Travis snorts. “No, my breaking and entering skills are perfectly fine, thank you very much.” He fidgets. Then he stops fidgeting because the window box just creaked alarmingly and he’s a bit worried that his continued weight will send it crashing down. “Can I come in?”

Wes’s eyebrows go up. “Knocking _and_ permission to enter, this is a red-letter day indeed.” But he backs up a step, making a vague motion with his hand. “Come on in.”

Travis slides off the window into the room, and he doesn’t stumble onto his face or need the desk to catch him because, for once, he’s not drunk even a little. And then he stands there, slightly awkwardly, trying to figure out how to go about this. He’s a very accomplished flirter and asking-out-er, but usually the people he’s flirting with and trying to ask out are not people whose apartments he’s been routinely breaking into.

“So,” Wes says, breaking the silence. He leans against the back of the couch, absently scratching Robin’s head. “Do you need anything, or am I just a throughway? Because I’m pretty sure Paekman’s not back yet.”

“No. Um.” Travis fidgets, then just says _Hell with it_ and thrusts his gift toward Wes. “This is for you.”

The blonde takes it. “Um. Thank you? For the…snapdragons and canned cat food.”

“The lady at the nursery said they’d be good for window boxes,” Travis says eagerly, bouncing on his toes.

“No, they’ll be fine.” Wes turns the potted plant in his hands, looking in some amusement at the two cans of cat food attached with a loose ribbon and a fuckton of packing tape. “Sorry, _why_ are you giving me a gift?”

“I’m wooing you.”

That is not what Travis meant to say. He _meant_ to say something about how grateful he is that Wes hadn’t called the cops that first night, or any subsequent nights thereafter. How awesome Wes’s couch is and also his cats, and even Wes is kind of cool when he isn’t being a raging jerk. And Travis really kind of appreciates when Wes is doing things like leaving the window open or cooking for him, and how it’s fantastic that he doesn’t even seem to really mind anymore that Travis keeps coming back.

And Travis really likes it when Wes smiles and he wants to continue coming over but in, like, an _official_ capacity and not just to see Paekman, because Wes isn’t just a throughway, and also Travis adores those cats because they’re wonderful. Mostly Batman, but Robin too.

And then his little rambling speech would have ended with a casual, flirty question about whether Wes wanted to go out sometime, and hopefully Wes would then say yes and agree and voila, dating would commence.

Instead, in a fit of nerves Travis hasn’t felt since the first time he ever asked a girl out, Travis simply blurts out, “I’m wooing you.”

Wes stands stock-still, staring at him with wide eyes. Travis fidgets uncertainly, the nerves just growing wings in his gut, and he curses himself for being so clumsy, he’s usually so much smoother than this!

It is a clumsy and inelegant confession, and finally, Wes reacts. He snorts, clapping his hand over his mouth, and then explodes in a fit of full-on snickers, which would be a lot cooler if it were a fit of candy bars instead of the slightly mocking giggling happening right now.

Travis shoves his hands in his pockets and debates throwing himself out the window right this second. It’s only a three story drop, he probably won’t even break anything.

“I’m sorry,” Wes wheezes, leaning against the couch for support. “ _Wooing?_ You’re _wooing_ me? My god, how Victorian do you think I am?”

And it’s perfect. It’s exactly what Travis needed to break the awkward nervousness thrumming through him, even if he didn’t know that’s what he needed. He slouches against nothing, a lazy grin crossing his lips. “Well…”

“No, no, don’t answer that.” Wes holds up a hand; Travis obligingly stops talking, lips still curled up. Wes shakes his head, settling himself. “Sorry. I’ve just… ‘ _wooing_ ’ is not a word I would have _ever_ thought to hear from you.” He looks down at the plant in his hands, still chuckling quietly like this is the greatest joke he’s ever heard.

The nerves return, but they’re a much lesser force than they were before, and Travis doesn’t let it show on his face. He just has to calm down, this is nothing big, it’s just asking someone out which he’s done a thousand times so no big deal.

Except this is Wes, and somehow that makes it _not_ like any other time he’s asked someone out.

He shifts, shoves his hands into his pockets. “So do you want to go out sometime? Like, on a date?”

The other man looks up. There’s still a hint of a smile playing on his lips, but his eyes are soft, subtle with an emotion Travis can’t pinpoint. Overall, he suddenly seems kind of _sad_ , maybe.

“You’re drunk,” he murmurs, almost to himself, and Travis blinks.

“Actually, I’m not.”

Wes frowns, inspecting him and apparently noting the lack of signs proclaiming Travis’s drunkenness. Like, for instance, Travis is on his own two feet, and he’s not swaying or about to fall over or anything. And then Wes’s face twists a little before settling into his habitual _I’m looking down on you but only a little_ look.

“Sorry,” he drawls, pushing up from the couch. “I’m not in the habit of dating people who break into my home.” He heads for the kitchen, leaving Travis dejected by the window.

It’s not that Travis hasn’t ever been rejected before, but that’s usually harmless and it doesn’t mean much of anything. This is…well, Travis doesn’t _know_ what this is, but he bought cat food and actually asked the lady at the nursery what kind of plant to get, so this is probably a little more important than what he usually does. But Wes has a point. What kind of person would go out with someone who came through the window, drunk more often than not? Only a fool, and Wes isn’t a fool.

Silently cursing himself, Travis turns towards the window, prepared to make his escape.

“Hey, Travis.”

Hope thuds in his chest, and he turns. Wes watches him from the kitchen, something mysterious and coy lurking on his lips.

“I won’t go out with you today,” he says, and his eyes never leave Travis’s face. “But if you really meant it, ask me again. Maybe I’ll change my mind.”

It’s… _something_. Travis doesn’t know what, quite yet, but it’s _something_ , and it makes his heart leap in his chest and a goofy grin spread across his face.

He takes his leave with a little bow, climbing out the window like Romeo, and he whistles as he goes.


End file.
